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Comment by octaveguin | Hacker News Reader

Gates actually addressed this[0].

The upshot is that as countries get richer, fertility rates decrease. Allowing these poorer countries to lead better lives will paradoxically lower the population increase. If you look at the western world, negating immigration, many countries have a shrinking population.

The more pressing problem of the future, ironically, will be under population - at least if you consider the economic impact and our way of life. Our economy right now is built on so much growth and young labor. What happens without poor countries and when more people are retired than working?

[0]http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/#myth-three=&section...

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> If you look at the western world, negating immigration, many countries have a shrinking population.

Even with immigration, Germany has a slightly negative population growth rate. And the United States grew by only 0.77% in a year. Again, that's with immigration.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

There's a conversation to be had about the future of non-renewable resources and the preservation of renewable ones, but the population growth fear-mongering from the likes of Dan Brown is deeply silly and not based on the whole truth.

That's just not true, as UN stated last month. Population, particularly in Africa, is growing instead of stabilizing.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/world-population-w...

Vaccines without sex education and birth control support programs are extremely irresponsible. We need both, just one is trading off a short term problem for a bigger long term problem.

> Vaccines without sex education and birth control support programs are extremely irresponsible

Are you sure there is no correlation between mortality and fertility rates? Assuming there is (which lots of evidence points to) there isn't actually any problem.

What is not true? He said fertility rates decrease, he didn't say fertility rates dropped below what is called 'sub replacement fertility' (which is when e.g. a man and a woman have 1 child on average, meaning every generation the population halves.)

His statement is perfectly true if say rates dropped from 5 to 4. That still causes a growing population, but the growth rates are decreasing. Once a country gets rich enough, you usually see fertility rates drop below SRF.

In fact, in Europe for example it's around 1.6, while you need roughly 2.1 or so children per woman to sustain population levels.

Isn't that because infant mortality is still a problem in Africa? i.e. more children are born because the parents don't know how many will survive.

Perhaps if this coincides with the rise of the machine replacing cheap labor, this might actually be a good thing, but something like a BIG would be needed to supply the non-working with income.

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